Paying it forward
Swiss charities raised CHF1.8 billion last year

This content was published on September 15, 2016 2:01 PMSep 15, 2016 - 14:01

In 2015, more charitable donations went to supporting foreign aid efforts in response to events such as the Nepal earthquake.

(Keystone)

Swiss charities that are considered to be responsible and transparent in their operations raised a total of CHF 1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) in 2015, a foundation said on Thursday.

The Zurich-based Zewo Foundationexternal link, which monitors charities and gives some of them a seal of approval, said the amount was CHF100 million more than in 2014.

Two-thirds came from households; the rest came from institutions, foundations, and societies. Swiss churches were particularly generous in 2015, donating CHF276 million to charitable organisations bearing the Zewo label.

Nearly a half billion francs of the donations flowed to Swiss humanitarian aid organisations working abroad.

Zewo’s director, Martina Ziegerer, attributed that trend to the global refugee crisis and the devastating earthquake and aftershock in Nepal last year that killed almost 9,000 people, injured 22,000, and damaged or destroyed nearly 800,000 homes.

More than one million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe mainly via the Mediterranean Sea, fuelling crisis and conflict within the European Union over how best to resettle the people.

swissinfo.ch and agencies

Neuer Inhalt

Horizontal Line

subscription form

Form for signing up for free newsletter.

Sign up for our free newsletters and get the top stories delivered to your inbox.

WEF 2018

Comment on this article:

Copyright

All rights reserved. The content of the website by swissinfo.ch is copyrighted. It is intended for private use only. Any other use of the website content beyond the use stipulated above, particularly the distribution, modification, transmission, storage and copying requires prior written consent of swissinfo.ch. Should you be interested in any such use of the website content, please contact us via contact@swissinfo.ch.

As regards the use for private purposes, it is only permitted to use a hyperlink to specific content, and to place it on your own website or a website of third parties. The swissinfo.ch website content may only be embedded in an ad-free environment without any modifications. Specifically applying to all software, folders, data and their content provided for download by the swissinfo.ch website, a basic, non-exclusive and non-transferable license is granted that is restricted to the one-time downloading and saving of said data on private devices. All other rights remain the property of swissinfo.ch. In particular, any sale or commercial use of these data is prohibited.